WPT Online Series: Niklas Åstedt Wins Second Series Title and Benjamin Voreland Takes Down PLO Knockout

By Lisa Yiasemides

Another fantastic night in the WPT Online Series on partypoker took place last night. Four more winners emerged as the inaugural festival enters its final week. Niklas Åstedt, Benjamin Voreland, Maximilian Diender and Sam Mather took a title each. Åstedt in particular is displaying his prowess for the game with this his second title of the series, not to mention a runner-up finish and reaching the semi-finals of the Heads Up event, which makes a total of four final tables so far this festival!

Not only that but four, starting flights in the $3,000,000 guaranteed WPTDeepStacks and $1,000,000 guaranteed Mini WPTDS events took place last night. The anticipation in both events has been building for the last week and today and tomorrow are the last opportunities to get in on the action ahead of tomorrow’s 8 pm Day 2 kick off.

PLO Knockout – $2,100

Yesterday five of the 104 starters returned with one ladder already in the bag following Jason Mercier’s elimination in 6th place at the end of Day 1. Returning at 7 pm* the tournament took just one hour to play to a winner, with Benjamin Voreland converting his significant chip advantage from the previous day into a first-place result.

Voreland had already accumulated almost $14,000 in bounties and by the end of it, he had taken a massive $47,750 out of the prize pool in bounties alone, around ten times that of anyone else in the field. That also ensured the Norwegian banked around a third of the total prize pool as the result of his fantastic run.

Niki Juhani Nurmisto took runner up position, going one further than second-chip leader Sam Higgs in third and Joni Jouhkimainen took fourth place. Connor Drinan was the first to fall when play resumed, though the American managed to bump up his profit margins by building the tournament’s second biggest bounty.

Mini PLO Knockout – $215

Running at the same time was the Mini event and it attracted 320 players to the virtual felt, collecting $64,000 into the pot. Niklas Åstedt and Javier Zarco bagged the top two stacks in Day 1 and the two held on to those positions until the end, when the Swedish online powerhouse came out on top after defeating the Spanish pro heads up.

Niklas Åstedt

Tomas Geleziunas, Danil Karavaev, Andres Ojeda and Li Zhang also made the table, denying Nana Imnadze (7th) a seat. Aristeidis Moschonas (10th), Daniel Tighe (11th) and John Spillane (12th) all fared well but couldn’t make it to the final either.

8-Max Turbo Bounty – $530

More than double the $100,000 guarantee was generated, as 378 players sat down to compete for a share of the $189,000 prize pool. It took four-and-a-half hours from start to finish, with Maximilian Diender reigning supreme at the end of it. Sarah Targui did her best to challenge the Dutchman but fell at the last to take the runner up position.

Joris Ruys was among the notables, taking an impressive third place and the Dutch results on the final table didn’t end there, with Jelle Moene coming in fourth. Hendrik Hovsepyan and Christopher Johnson rounded up the final table, leaving streamer and coach Benjamin Rolle (7th) out in the cold.

Simon Mattsson (8th), Steven Van Zadelhoff (11th), Matas Cimbolas (13th), Team partypoker Josip Simunic (14th) and Jerry Ödeen (18th) all made it into the top 20, with Conor Beresford, Boris Kolev, Arsenii Karmatckii and WPT Champion’s Club member Ole Schemion also among the big names who made a return on their investment.

Mini 8-Max Turbo Bounty – $55

Sam Mather lifted his first trophy of the series after he saw off all the opposition in a 1,906-strong field. Jacobus Visser presented the greatest challenge but couldn’t defeat Mather heads up, finishing in second. Vyacheslav Nikulin, Govand Amin, Vaidas Smigelskas and Steve Trepanier all did extremely well to make the final six too. Once again almost double the guarantee was invested, with a pot of $95,300 divided among the top 248 places.

Continues tonight

WPTDeepStacks – $1,050

So far 2,592 registrations have been logged in the WPTDS and 7,640 in the Mini WPTDS as two of the festival’s biggest highlights get ever closer to Day 2.

American pro Dan Shak (860,564) built the biggest stack after jumping in the turbo flight at the end of the night and devastating the rest of the field. Badih Bounahra (836,678) chipped up a monster stack too, and Alex Difelice (637,232), Pascal Hartmann (623,843), and Pieter Aerts (615,245) took the remainder of the top five places.

Dan Shak

Darren Elias, Barry Hutter, Team partypoker Anatoly Filatov, Julien Martini, Ankush Mandavia, Roger Teska, WPT Online Championship runner up Viktor Ustimov and WPTDS winner Mohamed Mangroe were just some of the well-known names to progress to the next stage.

Mini WPTDeepStacks – $109

Samuel Roussy-Majeau (974,679) came close to bagging a million in chips in the Mini event. The next biggest stacks across the four starting flights were Dale Hancock (815,265), Fabian Ludwig (774,008), Paul Evans (768,482) and Kenneth Hicks (712,370).

The huge value this tournament offers could be seen with some high calibre players sitting down to have a go. Anthony Spinella, Ivan Deyra, Ian O’Hara and Team partypoker Dzmitry Urbanovich were among them and all made it through to Day 2.

On today’s schedule

Today it is all about the final flagship event of the series with two WPTDS Day 1s on the cards this evening, one at 5 pm and one at 8 pm. The Mini WPTDS also has two starting flights running today at the same times.

Leaderboard

Please note this takes into account results up to and including May 23

Viktor Ustimov, Rui Ferreira, Samuel Vousden, Sam Greenwood and Pascal Hartmann remain in the top five spots, with no change at the top of the Leaderboard.

*All times stated are BST